Rideroid Controls

With the introduction of the Las Vegas field came an entirely new vehicle; the Rideroid. Aside sounding remarkably unpleasant (I mean your character stands on it kinda like they have another kind of roid…) the controls were a bit of a shock to a lot of players, especially those expecting the vehicles to control like AIS.

This is gonna be a quick post going over the Rideroid controls. You’ll need to get used to these if you want to score well in the Rideroid quests for obvious reasons.

Official Video Guide

There’s actually an official video guide here:

While it is all in Japanese, it’s got a fairly comprehensive visual demonstration of what not to get the most of your ‘roids.

Controls

A lot of people’s first thoughts when getting on a Rideroid was “how the heck do I actually move forward?”. It’s the first button on your action palette: the X button if you’re on a 360 controller or left-click on a mouse. This is the big thing to get used to in my opinion; your normal controls for moving forwards and backwards on foot will move you up and down on the Rideroid. This can be a bit jarring at first but you should soon get used to it.

Gettin on your Roid:

Simply walk up to an orange terminal and interact with it. You’ll immediately get on a Rideroid. Getting on one will switch you to a separate HP and PP bar just for the vehicle; your own HP and PP won’t change. If your Rideroid runs out of HP then it’ll explode and you’ll be forced to dismount. If it runs out of PP you just won’t be able to perform any actions on it but it can still move around.

Fly through the green rings to restore 60% of your HP and PP.

These rails will move you along at max speed along a pre-determined track for free. You can exit at any point by simply hitting jump and a direction. You can actually enter these tracks at any point as well; any ring along the way will attach you to the track.

Steering

To steer, use your Camera controls (or your general movement controls if you’ve switched from TPS mode). This is the right analogue stick on controllers or by moving the mouse. Note that getting on a Rideroid will automatically switch you to TPS mode.

Going Forward

Hit action 1 to go forward, hit it again to go forward faster which will drain PP at a slow rate (around 2PP/sec). Hit it a third time to enter a “braking” state. While in this state, your turn angle is considerably tighter so consider using this to turn around quicker!

Dodge

Hit jump while holding a direction to dodge in that direction. Doing so will cancel your current movement state, so you’ll need to hit action 1 twice again to carry on moving. This costs 5 PP to execute.

Quick Turn

Hit shift-action 1 to do a 180 degree turn. Again, this will cancel your current movement state, so you’ll need to hit action 1 again to move. Costs 5 PP.

Dismount

Hitting action 2 will dismount from the Rideroid. If you’re a clumsy fool like me you’ll do this accidentally a bunch. Note that dismounting will switch you to free camera mode if you’re still in TPS mode.

Dealing Damage

Simply flying into things will deal a small amount of damage (greatly enhanced against E-trial targets like Jellyfish and shield generators). You can deal a larger amount of damage by dismounting, as it’ll hurl the Rideroid forward after you jump off.Aiming with this is a little fiddly I’ve found.

That’s it! It’s not a terribly complicated thing but regardless it’s different enough from the rest of the game that you’re going to need some pointers at least initially. Let me know if there’s anything I missed out on.